"ECW Royalists & Archeology" Topic

Writing in Miniature Wargames magazine back in 2005, archeologist Anthony Dawson reported that evidence supports the view that Royalist companies in 1644-45 were frequently smaller than regulation, but overstaffed with officers and NCOs.

Do your Royalist units reflect this fact?

I normally over represent officers, sgts and drummers for example my 48 figure units will have 6 officers, 4 sgts and 4 musicians at 1/20 = 120 officers, 80 sgts, 80 musicians!!

cheers
matt

It's a long time since I've looked at my ECW armies. From memory I did not think of how any unit's ratio of officers/men from life but just what looked good on the table. On the other hand I would have payed attention to the total numbers.

x42

Does any wargames unit really represent that sort of detail?

Jaz
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The rules I use (Forlorn Hope) don't really worry about that but the ranks of the infantry are well filled with officers & NCOs, roughly 1/4 of the total in an average regiment.

It certainly seems to apply to the Naseby campaign … and makes the King's Army more expensive to run than the New Model (officers and specialists have higher pay …)…

I try to include plenty of special figures on the bases and generally (using Armati, which is unit to unit, not individual figures) put fewer fighting figures on a Royalist stand.

I'm aware of the convention- weren't there some small units called 'Reformadoes' that comprised of officers dispossessed of their troopers banded together? these would only be representable at small scale, but fun nonetheless.

In my own collection, I don't over-represent these as figures because I (blasphemously?) use the same units to represent either side, depending on my need.

I may review that in the future though, for fun.

Leigh

Certainly late in the First Civil War there were problems with maintaining units at theoretical strength for the Royalists. But overall this wasn't a tactical issue as it appears that companies and even regiments were more of an administrative unit rather than a tactical one. The period manuals make it clear that these units were to be split or merged as required to obtain units of the proper size for battlefield use. A large Regiment (Like Prides NMA Regt at Naseby) would be split or several smaller units merged (like the royalist Shrewsbury Foot at Naseby.

In terms of the portrayal of officers personally I believe most of the excess would be fighting in the ranks as volunteers, so they wouldn't be obviously different to the ordinary soldiers. This would certainly become true after a few months hard campaigning has taken its toll on their clothing.

Many Royalist cavalry units had a large proportion of "Gentlemen" wearing their civilian clothing plus what ever armour they could scrape together, so again the difference in appearance compared to the officers would be small.

In answer to the point on extra costs to field a unit with lots of ex-officers on paper it would cost more. In reality many of the Royalist officers campaigned at their own expense or on promise of pay at a later date "when the King enjoys his own again". As a result cash costs were not a major consideration. In wargaming terms of course they would have a higher unit point costs as you have a unit of high morale and experience.

So to answer the original question do my units reflect this – visually no not really. In unit points costs yes in some cases they do.